London Bus and Metro Paris Subway — first augmented reality apps for the iPhone

This is yet another great development. London Bus and Metro Paris Subway are the first apps to bring augmented reality to the iPhone. As you point your camera at the scene around you, specific information related to your location appears on the screen — superimposed over the live image. Pretty amazing. There's a video demo on YouTube that gives you an idea how it works. Plus, a useful article on Fast Company talks about this new technology and these apps. According to the article, this feature wasn't supposed to appear until iPhone 3.1, but the developer put it into these already-existing apps, and Apple allowed the new versions to appear in the store. It's great to see this feature, mainly because it gives a glimpse of things to come.

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Jim Karpen holds a Ph.D. in literature and writing, and has a love of gizmos. His doctoral dissertation focused on the revolutionary consequences of digital technologies and anticipated some of the developments taking place in the industry today. Jim has been writing about the Internet and technology since 1994 and has been using Apple's visionary products for decades.